Trout farming

On Friday afternoon we contracted with a transportation cooperative here in Mérida to take us up to Mucuchíes. The operative word is up. Mérida is at about the same altitude as Denver. Mucuchíes, an hour and a half away on winding mountain roads through jaw-droppingly beautiful tropical Andean scenery, is at about the same altitude as the north rim of the Grand Canyon. And darn cold, especially at night. We stayed at El Convite, an agricultural, financial, and educational non-profit rural center that has been operating in this mountain town for 24 years.

On Saturday we went still higher, to San Rafael, about 15 minutes from Mucuchíes. There we visited an agricultural/ecological/tourism cooperative called Sendero de Mirmicá (http://www.mirmica.org.ve/). After an overview of their various projects in the areas of production and education, we rode horses up the mountain to their trout farming operation (see photo, left). Rainbow trout were introduced to the Venezuelan Andes from Norway in the 19th century, and thrive in the cold glacial waters here. Mirmicá’s trout operation has been going for 3 years now, and has so far been successful. Presumably, the policies of Venezuela’s current government concerning expanded access to credit, training, and other resources for Venezuelan peasants and urban poor alike have helped make projects like this one possible.

Mirmicá is also involved in the struggle against the petrochemical contamination of the Andes, with the concomitant health problems one would anticipate. The trout are raised with water that comes directly from a mountain lake above them, and flows back into the watershed. The fish are fed food they produce themselves, and are marketing to other trout farms in the area as an alternative to costly corporate-produced trout food. No chemicals are used, and dogs are employed to keep away the birds of prey who would otherwise treat the trout ponds as a well-stocked buffet. They are also raising worms, and selling the organic effluence from the vermiculture as an alternative to petrochemical fertilizers. In addition, they raise and market organic seeds (chard, cilantro, parsley and fava beans among others), and have constructed their organic greenhouse from damaged pipes that couldn’t be used for the trout farm.

After leaving the Mirmicá cooperative, we traveled high up to the top of the Trans-Andean highway. It was a rainy day, and we were entirely inside of the clouds. I’ve included a photo, at the right, of the only plant that thrives this high up. It’s called the frailejón, and it grows 1 cm each year. The highway was a party scene, as hundreds of Venezuelan vacationers and day trippers stopped to pick up some snow—a very rare occurrence in these parts—and mold it into snow bunnies that sat on the windshields of their cars. (Oy, you should have seen the traffic jam getting back in to Mérida!)

Back here in town, I’ve been watching Channel 10, the Venezuelan government TV station. It is unabashedly partisan (“dairy farmers, sowing the seeds of a socialist homeland”), and devotes some attention to criticism and analysis of the hysterical anti-Chávez media campaign in the Venezuelan and international private media. I enjoyed a segment called “The Most Criminal Lies of the United States”; the episode I saw was about the North American military overthrow of the Grenadan revolution in 1983. Sunday is the day for Aló Presidente, in which Chávez speaks to the nation much as FDR did in his Fireside Chats. While Chávez says he’s a revolutionary, and Roosevelt’s New Deal was arguably intended to forestall revolution, I can’t help but notice parallels between the two. Both are charismatic leaders who have pushed through social reforms that have transformed the nation. Neither were shy about attempting to amass whatever power is necessary to make their programs a reality—witness FDR’s attempt to pack the Supreme Court, and Chávez’s use (twice, more than any other Venezuela president) of the decree power granted him by the legislature. Roosevelt broke George Washington’s unspoken two-term limit, and did in fact enjoy a lifetime elected presidency, leading Congress and the states to enact a constitutional amendment to prevent any future president from serving a 3rd or 4th consecutive term. Chávez proposed a change to the 1999 constitution that would have extended the presidential term here from 6 to 7 years and lifted the two-term limit; that change, along with an extensive package of other constitutional reforms, was rejected by Venezuelan voters in 2007. (One difference is that, unlike in the U.S., where impeachment and conviction is the only way to remove a president, the Venezuelan president can be recalled by popular vote at any time during her or his term…the Venezuelan opposition tried a recall plebiscite after the unsuccessful 2002 coup, but the voters supported the president. On Sunday, Bolivians are voting in their own presidential recall, one that is expected to reaffirm indigenous Bolivian president Evo Morales’s popular mandate. There was a large demonstration in Caracas on Saturday by Chávez’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela in support of the Bolivian president.)

For more information on Venezuela, check out venezuelanalysis.org . Their Links section includes every pro-Chavez, anti-Chavez and neutral site in English and Spanish that you could imagine. They also have the 1999 Consitution, in English.